Musical Instrument

My goal was to play drums, but my father made me take piano lessons. He told me I needed to learn to read music first, so I took lessons for six years. I thank God that he made me take those lessons, because it taught me a tremendous amount.

- Brian Austin Green

Don’t always be so quick to ignore mistakes that you make when you are playing music.  Sometimes those mistakes can lead to something that you’ll end up liking when you’re finished.

I’ll give you an example.

My wife is a piano player, and a much better one than me.  A couple summers ago she decided she wanted to take some lessons to learn a different style, just as an addition to her musical tool box.  The style she was learning was a chord-based technique, but she was learning to walk through chords in a more arpeggiated fashion than what she usually does.

I learn most of my musical technique really from looking over the shoulders of others.  That’s how I’ve picked up most of my guitar technique, most of my bass playing technique, and almost all of my piano playing and drumming technique.  With my wife taking lessons I saw an opportunity for myself to learn some new things as well.  I would occasionally sit in the room with her as she practiced, and she would show me what she was working on any time she started a new song.

One day when she wasn’t around I decided to try the technique myself.  I got my hands in the wrong position and hit some wrong notes, but I loved the sound of what I did.  It was a mistake, but that mistake inspired me to write a song

Here’s  the song if you’re interested.  It’s not elaborate by any means, but I love how it turned out.

This song is called “A New Beginning”

So, if you’re playing something new and you make a mistake, don’t ignore that mistake right away.  You might end up stumbling across something that inspires a new song.

Musical Instrument

I played, like, a year of piano until I learned the Pink Panther theme. That was my goal. Once I was good enough, I quit. Now my music has to have some rock.

- Jack Black

Can you play more than one thing at a time?

This is a video of Greg Pattillo.  He plays the flute and beat-boxes at the same time.  I’ve heard other people do that before… not to say that it doesn’t take talent, of course.  But in this video, Greg took things one step further.  By using a piano with a sustain pedal, he added in some simple held out chords that filled out his sound immensely.